Trade Treaties Map

The Trade Treaties Maptool is a multilingual web-based system on multilateral trade treaties and instruments designed to assist trade support institutions (TSIs) and policymakers in optimizing their country's legal framework on international trade.

Background

Launched in November 2005, as a tool for policymakers known as “LegaCarta”, it has been made more accessible as a web-based system to a larger audience since early 2011. Providing information and technical assistance on all multilateral trade agreements (as well as other legal instruments such as model laws, trade usages, institutional participations), Trade Treaties Map aims to include international institutions and professional groups, in particular the legal and business community of a country.

One of the purposes of LegaCarta is to encourage countries to participate in the process of defining international trade rules instead of merely being a recipient of such rules. In order to do so, national legal and business communities should be made aware of the existence and activities of key institutions that shape international trade rules. LegaCarta covers a broad range of trade-related issues (contracts, customs, dispute resolution, environment, finance, good governance, intellectual property, investment, transport and telecommunications.), explanatory notes for each instrument, updated tables of ratifications, country analysis profiles. These rules are overseen by 28 different international organizations.

The Trade Treaties Map, an ITC’s Tool

LegaCarta was designed in the context of the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goal N° 8 which aims to “develop further an open trading and financial system that is rule-based, predictable and non-discriminatory”, and which includes “a commitment to good governance”. As a concrete application, LegaCarta is a tool that helps integrate trade into development strategies creating national legal frameworks conducive to trade addressing both trade and poverty.

The Trade Treaties Map Website

Trade Treaties Mapis a multilingual web-based tool that provides information on over 270 multilateral trade treaties and instrumrnts most relevant to trade. It has primarily been designed to assist policymakers and TSIs in optimizing their country’s legal framework on international trade. But LegaCarta is also an ITC’s global public good, open to everyone and of particular interest to lawyers, legal advisors, law professors, researchers, PhD and university students.

The Trade Treaties Map Database

ITC has developed a database that is a one stop shop for the more than 750 multilateral trade related conventions currently effective around the world. At the country level, the multitude of international agreements makes it difficult for policymakers to decide which treaties should be ratified, which ones should be ignored, and which ones have a greater impact on improving the national/regional business environment. The global database includes:

LegaCarta’s facts

270 multilateral trade related treaties and instruments compiled in full text and summary

193 countries: monthly updates of theiraccession/adhesion for each treaty

28 international rule making organisations

13 categories and 8 subcategories classifying all treaties

3 languages: English, French and Spanish

The LegaCarta technical assistance programme

ITC’s Trade Law Unit offers a technical assistance programme to improve a given country's legal framework related to international trade, resulting in a country analysis licence. The programme is implemented in cooperation with national policymakers, TSIs and the legal and business community. It includes training on multilateral trade treaties, assessment of the country's strengths and weaknesses and training on the use of the LegaCarta database.

How does it work?

The Trade Law Unit implements the technical assistance programme at different levels depending on the needs expressed by the country. The technical assistance can be delivered in an integrated form or as independent modules. The integrated form reaches the different levels of a legal framework: from the policymakers to work on ratifications of key treaties, through increasing the knowledge of the ratified treaties within certain Ministries (Trade, Foreign Affairs, Justice) and/or other relevant public institutions, trade promotion organizations such as Chambers of Commerce and Export associations, the academic community to the legal and business community. More information about the five training modules can be found here.